Whatever challenges she would face in the future, they would be more easily dealt with if she had a safe place to rest and plan, and currently the cave in which she floated was the best place on offer.
She may have been biased, but she thought it was pretty nice.
Admittedly, still a little dirty, but good bones.
A scattering of worm teeth grinned up at her from the ground, and she swept them aside.
Just needs a little work.
To that end, after killing the worms and blocking off the first side-tunnel, she had helped seal off another four, leaving just one that needed to be sealed before the main chamber of the cave was secure.
Unfortunately, this one was larger than the rest, and despite the red-membraned microbe’s best efforts, they weren’t able to produce enough defensive slime in one go for Lucy and Rikorlak to finish sealing up the tunnel completely, so they would have to wait a while to recover.
Rikorlak and the microbe rested from their work and started to chat.
“Maybe I’ll call myself…Slucy. Or…Shikorlak. No! Riklucerak? Hmm…”
Lucy didn’t pay much attention, staring at the remaining tunnel, half-blocked with a hardening sludgy mass.
I could still fit, she thought.
After the long journey to find the cave in the first place and the short battle with the worms, Lucy had expected to feel tired enough to rest for a long while. Instead, she felt the opposite. She was invigorated after the fight and the discovery of the cave, and her cytoplasm was fairly brimming with energy.
I’ll poke around a bit, she decided.
Lucy was looking forward to sitting down and going through her System a bit more to learn about her Evolution, but despite the success of blocking off the tunnels, it would feel weird to rest here without having any idea at all of what lay behind the blocked passages.
And besides, she was curious.
She briefly told the others what she was doing, and asked them very politely to please not seal up the tunnel before she returned. If it came to it she was pretty sure she could eventually dig through the blockage with a spike, but she wanted a quick way out in case she ran into anything too dangerous.
As she left she heard Rikorlak still chatting away with the red-membraned microbe as the two of them got back to work tidying up. Even though they only had a combined two arms, they seemed to be managing, and Lucy was happy enough to leave them to it.
“How about Drimthrekdranon?” she heard Rikorlak suggest. “I used to know a very brave Drimthrekdranon. Or Vulsulfragis? You could go by Sully.”
Despite suggesting similar names just a few moments ago, the red microbe’s membrane wrinkled in distaste.
“Those aren’t nice names.”
Lucy wasn’t sure how ‘Shikorlak’ was any nicer, but she didn’t interject, already making her way past the half-formed barrier and into the winding tunnel beyond.
Lucy proceeded as she had when she first entered the cave, spike held ready before her while also keeping her fungal vacuole full of enzymes she could release in a defensive cloud. The storage organelle seemed able to hold them for as long as needed, which meant Lucy could leave it ready to fire from her cilia at a moment’s notice.
The tunnel branched and twisted much the same as the entrance had, but it extended far longer.
The water grew cooler the farther into the stone she travelled, and though she knew the difference must be incredibly slight in terms of degrees, the change still caused her to shiver slightly as she got used to it.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
To her disappointment, she didn’t immediately find anything interesting, even after following the tunnel for a good while. Still, she felt the excitement of exploring a new place and pressed on, determined to know what lay behind this door before it closed.
Eventually, she reached another chamber, similar to the one she had just left.
She swam in and looked around. This room had side-tunnels branching off as well, but more interestingly, the debris on the ground had changed.
Lucy went farther in and started sifting through it.
In addition to the membrane scraps and tiny worm teeth, there were long, flat pieces of a hard material Lucy didn’t recognize. She picked one up, thinking to bring it back and see if the others had any idea what it was. They looked like claw or mandible pieces, but she wasn’t sure.
She poked around for a few minutes more to see if there was anything that might give her any more clues about what organisms she might run into, but found nothing new, so she decided it was time to head back.
There were clearly plenty of directions she could choose to go, but Lucy didn’t want to make too many turns and get lost.
She turned back the direction she’d come in, only to see a blank slab of wall.
Fuck. I was sure I came in from that direction.
Lucy’s anxiety began to build as she looked around the room and tried to figure out. Unlike the first chamber, the tunnels that split off from this one were all the same size, and for a moment she had no idea which one led back.
I never was good with directions, she thought. Damn it! I should’ve left a trail of…something.
But before her mind could spin off into visions of endless tunnel wandering, she saw the empty space on the ground where she’d picked up the piece of claw or mandible, and her orientation in the room came into focus.
She swam down the tunnel she thought was the right one, and after a short distance, came across a groove in the wall that she recognized. Relieved to be on the right path, Lucy gripped her piece of debris and made for camp.
Well, she thought as she swam, that could’ve been unfortunate.
The panic she’d started to feel at nearly getting lost had driven her to swim quickly back through the stretch of tunnel she’d already explored. But as she got farther along and her fear faded completely, she wondered why exactly the emotion had gripped her in the first place.
Even if she had gotten hopelessly lost, it was unlikely to spell the end of her challenge unless she happened across an organism that could beat her in a fight. Which was possible, but Lucy had encountered no organisms at all in the tunnels so far, and if anything she was looking forward to trying out her new abilities more when she did find a fight.
Had she grown used to companionship so quickly, that she felt anxiety at the thought of being by herself again?
No way, Lucy thought, her find still bundled in her arm, this is not a sappy moment right now.
And as she neared the camp, she realized it wasn’t the potential loss of companionship that had scared her. Talking felt good, and Lucy appreciated that it was important for promoting social bonds, but her fear had been more visceral than that, more instinctive.
Eventually, she was able to articulate the feeling.
If I get lost, I’m not just losing someone to talk to, I’m losing a layer of security.
Lucy may not have totally trusted the others yet, but she did trust them enough to give a shout if something threatening was coming up and she hadn’t seen it yet. Rikorlak may have fought beside her before just to save his own hide and ensure his own survival, but she could work with that.
Having someone who could watch your back was a serious advantage in a world as dangerous as the one she was living in.
Well, I can see my own back, but that’s not the point.
Humans had evolved as social creatures, and even if Lucy’s body was now that of a one-celled organism, her mind was still human. She was still human.
And for a human, alone and lost didn’t just mean a slightly harder time. It meant your group had either been killed or had cut you off, and either way, you were on your own.
For a species whose members spent years of their childhood completely and utterly dependent on their group just to stay alive, it was a scary thought. So scary that it was hardwired into the human genome.
Alone in a dangerous situation equals dead.
Did that mean she should focus on getting strong enough that the instinctive fear wouldn’t matter, or that she should embrace her humanity?
After a while of considering this, Lucy’s head was spinning a little bit, and she resolved to focus more on concrete reality rather than abstract ideas.
By the time she made it back to camp, she had even formed a plan. If she could increase her odds by a little social interaction, she was willing to try.
When she saw the red-membraned microbe waiting for her, Lucy took a nice long exchange of molecules with the water around her, then prepared to ask her question.
“So!” she said as she approached, awkward and overly bright even to herself. “What name did you pick?”
The microbe looked up at her in surprise, and Lucy wondered if this was the first time she had actually spoken to them since their escape.
Lucy felt a tinge of embarrassment color her membrane. She had never been very good at talking to children.
It could be a substantial survival advantage for very little effort, she reminded herself, as she waited for the microbe's reply.
And isn’t that what friendship is all about?